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PubMed1978

A study of object concept development in institutionalized and home-reared infants.

Institution- and home-reared infants were tested in five areas: language development, object concept development, play, social responsiveness, and social maturity. The sample consisted of 104 infants ranging in age from six months to two years, thus broadly encompassing object concept stages 3 to 6 described by Piaget. The relationship of each of the five functions to IQ and background was examined. This paper describes the specific nature of the object concept function as reflected by the investigation. It was found statistically that object concept scores, as measured by Piagetian tests, were relatively unaffected by the background variable but were significantly related to IQ. The other measures were sensitive to both IQ and background variables. The fact that the object concept score was relatively independent of the background variable suggested that it represents the most stable developing function and provides the most accurate reflection of the cognitive potential of the infant.

Child Development↗
PubMed2000

Assessment of language structure: from syntax to event-based analysis.

The last 70 years have seen much research and clinical attention devoted to the descriptions and assessment of children's developing language structures. From these efforts have evolved a number of ways to describe the kinds of structures children evidence at different stages of development, and thus the means to make comparisons across children or across time periods. This article reviews major trends that have emerged in syntactic descriptions and approaches to language habilitation, culminating in contemporary approaches that view syntactic structure in real life events rather than in artificial tasks or with arbitrary checklists. These new approaches allow us to determine the communication goals that are not being met rather than cataloging the syntactic structures that have not yet been mastered and provide us with the contexts for helping the children develop structures that will lead to clearer expression of meanings and fewer breakdowns in communication.

Child↗
PubMed2002

The generativist-interactionist debate over specific language impairment: psycholinguistics at a crossroads.

Certain defining problems in psychology force us to clarify both the origins and the limits of a paradigm that has long governed our thinking in a particular area of research. The current debate over the nature and causes of specific language impairment is proving to be just such an issue. In particular, the existence of the KE family, 15 of whose 37 members suffer from specific language impairment, has raised far-reaching questions about the conceptual foundations of our current views about language deficits and, indeed, about language development in general.

History, 20th Century↗
PubMed1999

Neurobiological bases of behavioral development in the second year.

We discuss selected psychological competences that develop and become noticeable between one and two years of age and are temporally correlated to structural, biochemical and physiological changes in the brain. The psychological competences are: Language development, a sense of "right" and "wrong", self-awareness, and the ability to make inferences. The accompanying changes in the brain involve the prefrontal cortex, language-related cortical areas, hippocampus, cerebellum, basal ganglia and an increase in the connectivity of the network. Of special interest are the maturational changes in layers III-IV of the prefrontal cortex. Layer III is the origin and target of callosal and commissural axons linking the two hemispheres and the target of associational axons linking ipsilateral areas within each hemisphere. Layer IV, the target for axons from the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus, conveys information from other associational cortices, cerebellum, basal ganglia, and the reticular and limbic systems. In the second year, intensive dendritic growth and synaptogenesis in these layers increase the linking of these two layers and form a neural basis for a more efficient convergence and integration of information from the two hemispheres, which are functionally asymmetric. It is our hypothesis that these changes, together with the maturational changes in the cortico-subcortical network, are a basis for the observed emergence of the psychological competences. We are aware that temporal correlations cannot prove firm causal relationships. However, knowledge of these correlations is useful in generating specific hypotheses that can be tested directly.

Axons↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Behavioral manifestations of autism in the first year of life.

In the interest of more systematically documenting the early signs of autism, and of testing specific hypotheses regarding their underlying neurodevelopmental substrates, we have initiated a longitudinal study of high-risk infants, all of whom have an older sibling diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder. Our sample currently includes 150 infant siblings, including 65 who have been followed to age 24 months, who are the focus of this paper. We have also followed a comparison group of low-risk infants. Our measures include a novel observational scale (the first, to our knowledge, that is designed to assess autism-specific behavior in infants), a computerized visual orienting task, and standardized measures of temperament, cognitive and language development. Our preliminary results indicate that by 12 months of age, siblings who are later diagnosed with autism may be distinguished from other siblings and low-risk controls on the basis of: (1) several specific behavioral markers, including atypicalities in eye contact, visual tracking, disengagement of visual attention, orienting to name, imitation, social smiling, reactivity, social interest and affect, and sensory-oriented behaviors; (2) prolonged latency to disengage visual attention; (3) a characteristic pattern of early temperament, with marked passivity and decreased activity level at 6 months, followed by extreme distress reactions, a tendency to fixate on particular objects in the environment, and decreased expression of positive affect by 12 months; and (4) delayed expressive and receptive language. We discuss these findings in the context of various neural networks thought to underlie neurodevelopmental abnormalities in autism, including poor visual orienting. Over time, as we are able to prospectively study larger numbers and to examine interrelationships among both early-developing behaviors and biological indices of interest, we hope this work will advance current understanding of the neurodevelopmental origins of autism.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1986

A comparison of microcomputer-aided and traditional language therapy for developing communication skills in nonoral toddlers.

This investigation looked at the vocabulary learning and use, and social and communication growth of 8 severely handicapped toddlers under two different language conditions. A computer-based approach was compared to traditional intervention techniques. Treatment conditions were administered in randomized order by two graduate student clinicians. Communication growth was assessed by using a standard set of measures administered before the intervention, at midpoint between the two treatment conditions, and at the end. The results from this study indicated that the subjects made notable progress regardless of the treatment condition received.

Child↗
PubMed2002

Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language.

Language is a uniquely human trait likely to have been a prerequisite for the development of human culture. The ability to develop articulate speech relies on capabilities, such as fine control of the larynx and mouth, that are absent in chimpanzees and other great apes. FOXP2 is the first gene relevant to the human ability to develop language. A point mutation in FOXP2 co-segregates with a disorder in a family in which half of the members have severe articulation difficulties accompanied by linguistic and grammatical impairment. This gene is disrupted by translocation in an unrelated individual who has a similar disorder. Thus, two functional copies of FOXP2 seem to be required for acquisition of normal spoken language. We sequenced the complementary DNAs that encode the FOXP2 protein in the chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-utan, rhesus macaque and mouse, and compared them with the human cDNA. We also investigated intraspecific variation of the human FOXP2 gene. Here we show that human FOXP2 contains changes in amino-acid coding and a pattern of nucleotide polymorphism, which strongly suggest that this gene has been the target of selection during recent human evolution.

Alleles↗
PubMed2004

Simulating SLI: general cognitive processing stressors can produce a specific linguistic profile.

This study attempted to model specific language impairment (SLI) in a group of 6-year-old children with typically developing language by introducing cognitive stress factors into a grammaticality judgment task. At normal speech rate, all children had near-perfect performance. When the speech signal was compressed to 50% of its original rate, to simulate reduced speed of processing, children displayed the same pattern of errors that is reported in SLI: good performance on noun morphology (plural -s) and very poor performance on verb morphology (past tense -ed and 3rd-person singular -s). A similar pattern was found when memory load was increased by adding redundant verbiage to sentence stimuli. The finding that an SLI-like pattern of performance can be induced in children with intact linguistic systems by increasing cognitive processing demands supports the idea that a processing deficit may underlie the profile of language difficulty that characterizes SLI.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Theme analysis of narratives produced by children with and without Specific Language Impairment.

Theme is defined within the Systemic-Functional Linguistics framework as the point of the departure for the clause and therefore important for text organisation. Aspects of theme are examined in the elicited narratives and story retells from a group of 25 5-8 year-old children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and a group of 25 age-matched children with Typically Developing Language. The analysis indicated that subjects with SLI used less variety and complexity in themes with more than one element but this is suggested to reflect localised lexicogrammatical problems. Analysis of the aspects of theme which are more reliant on text-level resources, namely marked theme and theme progression patterns, yielded equivocal results. No significant inter-group difference was found in the subjects' representation of marked Theme and only one of the two progression patterns showed a significant difference. These findings are discussed in relation to the theoretical implications for the description of narrative abilities in SLI.

Child↗
PubMed1995

Cerebral gigantism (Sotos' syndrome). A rare cause of delayed walking and awkward gait.

A case history of an 8-year-old girl with cerebral gigantism (Sotos' syndrome) has been presented. Throughout her life, this child has demonstrated all of the common features of Sotos' syndrome including large size at birth, excessive growth during childhood, dysmorphic craniofacial features, delay in motor and speech development, generalized clumsiness, and awkward gait. Family history was contributory with delays in early language development and the possibility that the child's father had Sotos' syndrome. When evaluating a pediatric patient for pes planus, delayed walking, and gait problems, the practitioner should consider the entire clinical profile and unusual etiologies.

Abnormalities, Multiple↗
PubMed2005

Reading depends on writing, in Chinese.

Language development entails four fundamental and interactive abilities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Over the past four decades, a large body of evidence has indicated that reading acquisition is strongly associated with a child's listening skills, particularly the child's sensitivity to phonological structures of spoken language. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the close relationship between reading and listening is manifested universally across languages and that behavioral remediation using strategies addressing phonological awareness alleviates reading difficulties in dyslexics. The prevailing view of the central role of phonological awareness in reading development is largely based on studies using Western (alphabetic) languages, which are based on phonology. The Chinese language provides a unique medium for testing this notion, because logographic characters in Chinese are based on meaning rather than phonology. Here we show that the ability to read Chinese is strongly related to a child's writing skills and that the relationship between phonological awareness and Chinese reading is much weaker than that in reports regarding alphabetic languages. We propose that the role of logograph writing in reading development is mediated by two possibly interacting mechanisms. The first is orthographic awareness, which facilitates the development of coherent, effective links among visual symbols, phonology, and semantics; the second involves the establishment of motor programs that lead to the formation of long-term motor memories of Chinese characters. These findings yield a unique insight into how cognitive systems responsible for reading development and reading disability interact, and they challenge the prominent phonological awareness view.

Asian People↗
PubMed2000

Academic and Social Benefits of a Co-enrollment Model of Inclusive Education for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (d/hh) students are traditionally educated within self-contained programs at residential or special day schools, within self-contained or resource classrooms in public schools, or within regular education classrooms with support provided by an itinerant teacher. The co-enrollment model offers a promising alternative in which these students are educated within a regular education classroom composed of both d/hh and hearing students and team-taught by a teacher of the deaf and a regular education teacher. This article examines the development of one such program and the social and academic performance of the d/hh students within the program. Data on social interaction between d/hh and hearing classmates suggest that specific instructional strategies that promoted students' sign language development, identified d/hh students as "sign language specialists" and grouped d/hh and hearing students during academic activities resulted in increased interaction between these two groups of students. Stanford Achievement Test scores in the areas of reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, mathematical problem solving and procedures indicate that although d/hh students scored below the national normative hearing group, reading comprehension levels exceeded the national normative sample of d/hh students during both years two and three of the program. We discuss the challenges of implementing a co-enrollment program.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1981

A comparative study of pre-meaningful vocalizations produced by normally developing and Down's syndrome infants.

Pre-meaningful vocalizations produced by nine normally developing and 10 Down's syndrome infants were recorded as part of a longitudinal study of language development. The recordings were phonetically transcribed using a modified version of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Data were analyzed in terms of (1) age at onset of reduplicated babbling (2) developmental trends for place of consonant articulation, and (3) developmental aspects of vocalic productions. In general, substantial similarities between the two groups of infants were observed with regard to the selected parameters. Both groups began to produce canonical, reduplicated babbling at 8-8 1/2 months of age, and trends regarding consonantal and vocalic development for the two groups were very similar during approximately the first 15 months of life.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2005

Deep-feeling development gives autistics abstractions: when a young person has no abstractions, his or her thoughts or behaviors frequently seem autistic.

The heart of autism is existence by oneself. It is being, talking and acting by oneself. Talking by oneself is not talking to oneself but talking at others. Its purpose is not exchanging or hearing words. Its purpose is sending words to another person. If being completely by themselves is autistics' experience of their existence, then they may have no need for language. And there is no language development in about half of all autistics. For autistics who do have language, if they are mostly sending out words and are only sometimes exchanging or hearing words, then another person's language has little or no effect on them. Without language from outside persons as a guide, autistics' language becomes strange and free from the normal body motions (gestures) that come with language. So strange language and uncommon body motions with that language are two of autism's chief signs. Autistics are unnerved by change. So they keep their behaviors in a narrow range and do them over and over with no connection to other persons' purposes. A narrow range of behaviors done over and over for no seeming purpose is another chief sign of autism. Because young boys and girls get to being, talking and acting by themselves when they come down with autism, they no longer seem to have any idea of what is going on between themselves and other persons. So when boys and girls get autism, they frequently do or say strange and surprising things with other persons. The knowledge of what to do and say with other persons comes as abstractions. This paper's one hypothesis is that autistic persons have no abstractions because the development of their deep feelings has not gone far enough to let abstractions come into existence. By acting or talking without the support of abstractions, autistic persons have a hard time with language, learning, living and loving in relation to other persons or to society. Autism comes from stopping the development of a baby's deep feelings within the first six months after birth. The development of deep feelings may be started again by a special operation named deep-feeling contact. (Body-to-body touching is never necessary for making deep-feeling contact.) As the development of his or her deep feelings goes forward, the autistic person's abstractions come into existence. Then language, learning, living and loving become much simpler for him or her.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2004

Reexamining the vocabulary spurt.

The authors asked whether there is evidence to support the existence of the vocabulary spurt, an increase in the rate of word learning that is thought to occur during the 2nd year of life. Using longitudinal data from 38 children, they modeled the rate of word learning with two functions, one with an inflection point (logistic), which would indicate a spurt, and one without an inflection point (quadratic). Comparing the fits of these two functions using likelihood ratios, they found that just 5 children had a better logistic fit, which indicated that these children underwent a spurt. The implications for theories of cognitive and language development are considered.

Child↗
PubMed2001

Children creating language: how Nicaraguan sign language acquired a spatial grammar.

It has long been postulated that language is not purely learned, but arises from an interaction between environmental exposure and innate abilities. The innate component becomes more evident in rare situations in which the environment is markedly impoverished. The present study investigated the language production of a generation of deaf Nicaraguans who had not been exposed to a developed language. We examined the changing use of early linguistic structures (specifically, spatial modulations) in a sign language that has emerged since the Nicaraguan group first came together: In tinder two decades, sequential cohorts of learners systematized the grammar of this new sign language. We examined whether the systematicity being added to the language stems from children or adults: our results indicate that such changes originate in children aged 10 and younger Thus, sequential cohorts of interacting young children collectively: possess the capacity not only to learn, but also to create, language.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Study of the human auditory cortices using a whole-head magnetometer: left vs. right hemisphere and ipsilateral vs. contralateral stimulation.

Structural and functional asymmetries of the temporal lobe affect language development and may also play a role in a variety of disorders, ranging from specific language impairment to schizophrenia. Whole-head neuromagnetometers allow the noninvasive measurement of functional asymmetries since activity from both hemispheres is recorded simultaneously. In the present study, the location of the auditory cortices and their responsiveness to pure tones was compared between hemispheres in healthy human subjects. Data suggest a greater contralateral than ipsilateral activation. In line with previous findings, sources of responses for the right hemisphere seem to be more anterior than for the left one.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Diagnosis and classification in child and adolescent psychiatry: the case of unipolar affective disorder.

Child and adolescent psychiatric classification is a broad domain in which the consideration of a developmental and longitudinal approach is essential. Some of the key issues involved are reviewed in this paper by focusing attention on childhood affective disorders, which are important both clinically and epidemiologically. It has been argued and demonstrated by Kovacs that in contrast to adults, children may not be capable of experiencing or reporting the symptoms thought to be representative of major depressive disorder. Nor may they be able to give an account of their duration. Hence, the pattern of manifested depressive symptoms is likely to vary according to age and stage of development of the child and young adolescent, and this is probably related to concept and language development. Further, distress and negative affect may be expressed by externalising symptomatology, especially in the pre-school years. The complexity of multiple depressive disorders, their coexistence and comorbidity with anxiety disorders needs to be studied further, employing whenever possible a developmental perspective and a longitudinal design.

Adolescent↗